Life cycle information for e-literature JISC Joint Programmes Meeting Friday 8 th July 2005 Why digital Collections should ride life cycles James Watson LIFE Project Manager LIFE

UCL, British Library JISC 4/04: (Supporting Digital Preservation and Institutional Asset Management) Strategic 1/2/5-31/1/6 (12 month) The project

Life cycle management –Software development –Product life cycle Life cycle costing –Construction (building and maintenance) Records management Life cycles 1

Advocated for digital preservation –Tony Hendley JISC/NPO –Beagrie/Greenstein, –Jones/Beagrie Life cycle collection management Amalgam = LIFE Life cycles 2

Why life cycles in libraries? Total cost of stewardship of resource Each stage of ownership –Costs of each stage through time Selection, acquisition, cataloguing etc All downstream costs –What footprint do (digital) acquisitions leave over the long term? Why?

Information for… All institutions with digital collections –Collection management –Preservation What should we preserve Who should preserve it Steps early in the life cycle enable preservation Why?

Application of life cycle model to digital collections UCL and the British Library Costing of each stage Including digital preservation –Algorithm to obtain cost –Relative to other elements What?

Construct generic life cycle model –Tool to be applicable to all digital collections Application to selected collections Data mining –Up front costs –One time costs –Ongoing costs Including staffing How?

Selected collections: Electronic journals (UCL) –Local storage (Digital Asset Management system) VDEP (BL) –Voluntarily deposited digital material Web archiving –BL’s part of the UKWAC So far (1)

Construction of model (as we speak) –Creation/selection… –To preservation/disposal Trigger points Should we / shouldn’t we / How should we Branches on cycle Amalgamation of aspects of life cycle collection management and advocated digital life cycle So far (2)

Application of model Data mining (financial / administrative) –How long does each stage take –How much does each stage cost –Information on preservation Publication of results Conference (12/12/2005) To come

Why digital collections need life cycles Instability/mutability of information Early intervention eases preservation Preserve what you need to (and know what you need to preserve) Benign neglect will not work Cost models for management/preservation Life cycles 3

12 month project Tool will be life cycle cost model to apply to other digital collections Further application of cost model More costing of digital preservation LIFE2, AfterLIFE, LIFE in the fast lane Sustainability

Terotechnology Handbook –Department of Industry (Committee for Terotechnology) –London, H.M.S.O., 1978 A good read... Island block

ISLAND BLOCK

Comments? Questions? LIFE